The Crooked Shore

by Martin Edwards

  Tory’s relentlessness had enabled her to deceive everyone. Even Ben Kind. The only surprise was that it had taken her so long to see through Prentice, to recognise that he too was a practised liar. Perhaps for once she had been blinded by desire. For more than two decades, she’d ridden her luck. Today it had run out, and she knew it.

  ‘Kingsley Melton said you love coming back from the dead. A favourite line of yours, isn’t it? You’ve made two comebacks, haven’t you? Once when you were resuscitated after the cardiac arrest. And once twenty-one years ago, when you left home to begin a new life under a new identity.’

  Tory’s glance raked across Bunny Cohen. ‘You took my coffee cup away.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Don’t tell me you’re going to check the fingerprints to see if they are a match for this Ramona Smith?’

  Her tone was contemptuous, as if she were calling out a cheat.

  ‘Will they match?’ Hannah said.

  Kingsley could see Vesper now, prancing around the back garden in Bowness that fateful afternoon. She’d taken up ballet lessons and proudly announced that when she grew up, she was going to be a ballerina. As far as he could tell, she had two left feet.

  The parents were inside the bungalow, haggling with a fellow dealer who was selling up his stock. Their business discussions always took an age. Mamma had instructed Kingsley to look after his little sister. He’d nodded dutifully. In recent months, he’d adopted the line of least resistance and pretended to care about her well-being. Vesper knew he loathed her, but the parents fell for it, and fooling them was all he cared about.

  He’d made himself comfortable in his father’s old deckchair, next to the hydrangeas, and tried to concentrate on the excitement of Biggles Hits the Trail. Tomorrow he was due to return the book to the library, and he was desperate to get to the end of the story, but Vesper’s squeals of excitement kept breaking his concentration.

  He looked up and called, ‘Don’t go near the pond!’

  ‘Shut up!’

  ‘It’s dangerous.’

  ‘Stop bossing me about!’

  With a noisy groan of exasperation, he clambered to his feet and beckoned her towards him, like a football referee about to send a player off the field of play.

  ‘You’re only a little kid; it’s not safe.’

  ‘And you’re a cowardly custard!’

  She skipped around on the paving slabs that edged the pond. Her version of a pirouette.

  He took a couple of paces towards her.

  ‘Get away from the edge!’

  ‘I’m learning to swim. Not nesh, like you. You’re a scaredy cat! You’re terrified of getting wet!’

  He couldn’t help retaliating. ‘And you’re useless at ballet!’

  Vesper stuck her small pink tongue out at him and spun around faster. But the slabs were uneven and her foot got caught, tripping her up. She fell backwards into the pond.

  The strange thing was that it happened so quickly, she didn’t have time to scream. There was just a loud splash as she hit the water.

  Shock paralysed him. He glanced over his shoulder, half-expecting to see Mamma in hysterics, bellowing at his father to do something.

  But the grown-ups were still in the front room, arguing about money.

  He advanced to the edge of the pond. Vesper had cracked her head on a stone. There was a horrid gash on the side of her head, not quite concealed by her curls. The water wasn’t really deep, but she was facedown and motionless. It looked as if the blow had knocked her out. Kingsley couldn’t be sure if she was alive or not.

  He turned in confusion. Should he run back to the house and raise the alarm? If Vesper were fished out, she’d be sure to make a terrible fuss. She’d tell a pack of lies and blame him for her accident. The grown-ups were sure to take her side.

  Looking back over his shoulder, he saw her again. The little girl who had stolen his parents’ love. She’d brought disaster on herself through sheer pig-headedness and stupidity. Really, he said to himself, she’d got what she deserved.

  If anyone deserved to be taught a lesson, it was Vesper Melton.

  He stopped in his tracks. No, he wouldn’t raise the alarm just yet. Why shouldn’t he bide his time? Let her learn how it felt to suffer.

  Slowly, he returned to the deckchair and picked up his book. His thoughts were in rather a muddle, so it was easiest just to carry on reading. One more chapter, it wouldn’t take that long.

  Tory gave an ostentatious yawn. ‘I don’t intend to discuss this.’

  ‘This is an informal conversation.’

  Hannah nodded to Bunny, who tossed her pen aside.

  ‘DC Cohen won’t take notes.’

  Tory heaved a sigh. What calculations were going through her head?

  ‘All right. If you’d like me to listen to whatever you have to say, I’m not in a desperate rush to get back home. My lover is planning to kill me for my money. And a nutcase who thinks we’re a match made in heaven is stalking me. Any fairy story you can spin will be welcome light relief.’

  Hannah and Bunny looked at each other. When they’d planned this meeting, Bunny had suggested keeping schtum until the fingerprints confirmed that Tory was Ramona Smith. Hannah, conscious of Tory’s medical history, preferred to lay her cards on the table. A chat at this stage, when her speculations were unproven, was less stressful than an interview under caution once they’d uncovered evidence establishing Tory’s true identity.

  ‘All right, Ms Reece-Taylor. Of course I may be wrong about the details. Feel free to put me right.’

  Tory leant back in her chair. ‘I’m all ears.’

  ‘Very well.’ Hannah gave a wry smile as she echoed Kingsley Melton. ‘Are you sitting comfortably? Then I’ll begin.’

  The glassy eyes of Logan Prentice’s corpse stared at Kingsley in disbelief. He’d made the same mistake as Vesper, failing to comprehend what a meek person was capable of.

  I’m their nemesis.

  The thought comforted Kingsley as he stood on the jetty, contemplating his victim. With a start, he realised he was still clutching the Smith & Wesson as if his life depended on it.

  How surreal this scene would seem to an onlooker. A dead body and a man with a gun, in a sunlit English country garden. How truly …

  An ugly rattling noise in the distance broke into his reverie. A car coming down the drive! The manor stood between the drive and the jetty. Nobody could see him at the moment, but he began to tremble.

  Who was it?

  The noise grew louder. He took a few steps forward, his movements erratic, as if he were a ramshackle mechanical toy. The answer came to him like a thunderclap. Fiona Hudson had come to inspect the flat they let out. Her gimcrack repair of the Passat’s dodgy exhaust pipe must have failed. At least the hellish racket warned him of her impending arrival.

  Sweat crawled down his face. His head was throbbing. Fiona and Molly owned a flat commanding a view of the lake. If she looked out of the living room window, she’d see him with Prentice’s body.

  He must do something, but his mind was a hopeless whirl.

  The gun, he had to get rid of the gun.

  Prentice’s body he could drop into the lake. He wasn’t sure if a watery grave was the safest resting place for his enemy, but he was short of options. Once he’d dodged the immediate threat, he could work out a plan.

  The gun must go. He’d throw it as far as he could, so that it finished up in the muddy depths of the lake.

  To lose the Smith & Wesson was a sacrifice, but what choice did he have?

  Like a cricketer in the outfield, he wound himself up to hurl the gun. Releasing it with a tremendous effort, he stumbled forward and caught his foot on Logan Prentice’s outstretched leg. Tripping headfirst, he plunged into the cold water.

  He was too shocked to scream.

  Just like Vesper was his last conscious thought.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  ‘The original investigation into Ramona Smith�
�s disappearance established several facts,’ Hannah said. ‘Her home life was unhappy. Both her parents were heavy drinkers and they split up when she was seven. Her mother supplemented her income with part-time sex work. Ramona was bright, but lacked qualifications. She drifted from job to job and from affair to affair. The difference was that men used her mother, but Ramona used men.’

  ‘Sounds like she had her head screwed on.’

  ‘Yes, she was intelligent but never settled to anything. Her lovers were older and married and plied her with gifts. My guess is that she wasn’t starry-eyed about any of them. She doesn’t seem to have been interested in having children or settling down to a quiet family life.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ Tory said, ‘she discovered that she couldn’t have children.’

  ‘You think so?’

  ‘No idea, Chief Inspector. Carry on.’

  ‘Some of the men became besotted. She was charismatic, even if not a conventional beauty.’

  ‘I saw her photograph on the news,’ Tory said drily. ‘Ramona Smith wasn’t a beauty of any kind.’

  ‘You do her a disservice,’ Hannah said. ‘Yes, she’d broken her nose; yes; her hair was mousy and nondescript; yes; her teeth were poor.’

  ‘Flat-chested, too, wasn’t she?’

  Hannah considered Tory’s voluptuous figure. ‘All these things can be fixed.’

  ‘If you have the money.’

  ‘Precisely. I bet Ramona built up quite a nest egg of cash, thanks to the presents she received from her various admirers. She strikes me as quite shameless, making out that she was deep in debt, when actually she was saving for a rainy day. Or rather, the day when she could escape from here. In Bowness, her horizons were limited. I imagine she felt desperate to get away from the life she knew, especially when one of her exes, Gerry Lace, continued to pester her.’

  ‘Leave such a beautiful part of the world, simply because she’d split up with a man?’ Tory said coolly. ‘Hardly the mark of a strong character.’

  ‘People who grow up here often take Cumbria for granted. Some folk need a bit of distance, time, and space, to appreciate the Lakes to the full.’

  Tory shook her head, like a chess player disappointed by an opponent’s unworthiness, ‘Why be so elaborate? If she was footloose and fancy-free, why not simply sling her hook?’

  ‘My guess is that for years, she’d dreamt of starting afresh, somewhere else in Britain. Maybe she longed to travel far and wide. She and her mother were never close. Much as she enjoyed walking the fells and cycling along the country lanes, there was nothing to keep her in the Lakes, other than her grandmother. Unfortunately, the old lady succumbed to dementia.’

  ‘If she cared that much for the grandmother, would she abandon her?’

  Hannah’s spine prickled. She’d gambled on the woman finding herself unable to resist the urge to engage, to try out lines of defence. She didn’t mind revealing what was in her mind if it improved her chances of teasing out the truth.

  ‘You’re right. The old lady was still alive when Ramona disappeared. But dementia is a terrible curse. Personalities change out of all recognition. My guess is that Ramona found it too upsetting. She couldn’t bear it any more.’

  ‘As you say, you’re guessing.’

  ‘The grandmother had become a stranger to her and didn’t have long to live. Besides, it was easier to make a complete getaway while she was still alive.’

  ‘What makes you say that?’

  ‘It’s speculation, of course.’

  Tory gave her a measuring stare. ‘Evidently.’

  ‘Ramona was a fit woman and a keen cyclist. But she left her old bike behind her, so it seemed she couldn’t have cycled anywhere. As a long shot, this morning I called Ravi Thakor.’

  Tory’s face was a blank. If she knew the name, she wasn’t admitting it.

  ‘When I first spoke to him, he mentioned buying her a bicycle. Turns out it was a flashy parting gift, a different make from her old bike. Nobody else knew it existed. I wonder if she kept it at her grandma’s house, in Bardsea, together with some money and a few essentials that she could take with her when she was ready for her getaway. An impromptu hair-dye, a few other changes to her appearance, and she wouldn’t look much like the Ramona Smith everyone was familiar with.’

  ‘Long shots,’ Tory murmured. ‘Guesswork.’

  ‘In cold case policing, there’s no avoiding them. By road it’s twenty-five miles from Bardsea to the mainline station at Oxenholme. From there you can catch a train to anywhere you fancy. London Euston is an obvious choice. She could have picked up the first train in the morning. A long ride in the dark takes a good two hours, but a fit cyclist in her early thirties could manage it easily enough.’

  ‘I’ll take your word for it,’ Tory said. ‘I prefer to travel by BMW.’

  ‘I’m sure you do,’ Hannah said. ‘Nothing but the best, these days. Actually, I’m curious as to the real reason why you travelled here by taxi.’

  Tory’s eyes narrowed. ‘You are so cynical, Chief Inspector.’

  ‘It comes with the job. Once we accept that Ramona is still alive, a lot of pieces fall into place. To vanish off the face of the earth, she must have made preparations over a long period of time. Her disappearance wasn’t a whim or a panic move, she didn’t flee on the spur of the moment. No, she had a plan, and she laid the groundwork by creating a false identity.’

  ‘If you’re to be believed, Chief Inspector, this uneducated working class woman from Bowness was clever enough to outfox everyone, including the mighty Cumbria Constabulary. Is that likely?’

  ‘I don’t underestimate Ramona. That’s what she traded on; it’s where the original investigation went wrong. I suppose she felt she’d been underestimated all her life. Taken for granted. Badly treated, especially by men. Gerald Lace, for instance. Another woman, someone she knew, had already accused Lace of attempted rape. Beneath the charming façade, he was unstable, volatile. Violent.’

  There was a long silence. Tory was as immobile as a statue.

  ‘In those days,’ Hannah said, ‘there was a well-known method popularised by a thriller called The Day of the Jackal. The trick was to scout around graveyards and find the name of a dead child who was born at much the same time as yourself. Step two, apply for a copy of the deceased’s birth certificate. Step three, use that as proof of identity when applying for a passport. Hey, presto! You became someone else. And that’s exactly what Ramona did.’

  ‘Oh, yes?’

  ‘Her new name was Victoria. Or Vee for short. She gave Vee a sort of life as an imaginary friend, someone she mentioned to other people whenever the opportunity arose, but who never showed her face. After Ramona, alias Victoria, made good her escape, she used an alternative short form of the name. She became Toria. Or Tory.’

  The name hung in the air. Tory hunched her shoulders.

  ‘I have a wild idea,’ Hannah said, ‘that Ramona might have wanted to hit back at her father, Jimmy, by seeking out a comfortable, materialistic lifestyle. He was a rabid trade unionist.’

  Tory’s lip curled. ‘A bully and a bigot, you mean? The sort who says Never kiss a Tory?’

  Emboldened, Hannah said, ‘Choosing that name was a small retaliatory poke. Not like the elaborate revenge she took on Gerry Lace. Who must have hurt her very, very badly to justify such extreme measures.’

  ‘You said yourself, the man was a rapist.’

  ‘Never charged, let alone convicted.’

  ‘That’s what’s wrong with society, isn’t it? Playing by the rules gets you nowhere. Brutal men walk free. Female victims who go to court are treated like criminals. There’s no justice.’

  ‘Whatever Lace did to Ramona must have been serious. Only that explains her behaviour. My guess is that he raped her.’

  Tory’s face was blank. ‘He sounds the type.’

  ‘Whatever happened, she decided that it wasn’t enough to get away from the area and start a new life. He deserved to be punis
hed. Nadine Bosman had been let down by the system when she made a complaint. Ramona decided to exact a different form of justice.’

  No response.

  ‘I’ve read the transcripts of the police interviews with Lace. He admitted that he found her intoxicating. Tried to make out he was so smitten that he couldn’t possibly have done her any harm. At one point he said he’d have left his wife for her. Shirley Lace, the woman who sacrificed everything for him.’

  ‘If you say so.’

  ‘The way I picture it, Ramona told Lace she was willing to see him again and proposed a tryst on the Crooked Shore. For her purposes, it was ideal. Isolated and not far from the grandmother’s cottage at Bardsea. Walkable on a fine night, with little danger of being seen.’

  Tory yawned. ‘Would anyone in their right mind take the risk of going to a lonely spot with a violent rapist?’

  ‘Ramona was an exceptional woman.’

  ‘Exceptionally stupid, by the sound of it.’

  ‘Ruthless, certainly. And well-prepared. She caught Lace off guard and knocked him out. Then she nicked herself with a pen-knife and daubed her own blood on her anorak. She hid the rucksack nearby and the anorak at Birkrigg Common, only a short detour from her route to Bardsea. She’d packed a bag of essentials and kept it at her grandmother’s cottage, to take with her on the bike and train the next morning. Everything she did was designed to conjure up the scenario of a violent and desperate sex killer who tried to cover up his crime.’

  ‘Well, well,’ Tory said, ‘you’ve certainly brought something fresh to your cold case, Chief Inspector. If only an exotic imagination.’

  Bunny could contain herself no longer. ‘Perhaps this case needed looking at from a woman’s point of view. The victim’s perspective, not the man’s.’

  Tory winced. ‘Feminist policing, is that the vogue?’

  Hannah said, ‘On recovering consciousness, Lace must have felt bemused as well as shocked. When he heard about Ramona’s disappearance, I suppose he didn’t know what to make of it. When he was questioned, his instinct was to lie. He bullied his family into backing him up, a fatal mistake. What happened between him and Ramona on the Crooked Shore was bizarre. When he belatedly told the truth, his credibility was in bits. In court, the case for the defence was that Vee was a man and responsible for killing Ramona. A red herring, but more credible than Lace’s story, which made little sense. Why would Ramona attack him, as he suggested, especially if she’d proposed they get together again?’